Creative Chemistry 101 - Day 2

Alrighty, today's the day to start gettin' inky with it! I've got my rubber glove on (just one hand, I like to think of myself as the Michael Jackson of the crafting world, ha!) and I'm ready to rock some distress inks Tim Holtz style!

First up, the "Blended Distress/Spritz & Flick Technique"

Colors used: Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Dusty Concord, Broken China, Wild Honey, Barn Door, Fired Brick.

This is a technique that I had leaned before but wasn't having satisfactory success with... until now! The minute I watched Tim demonstrate this technique I had one of those "Aha!" moments where you instantly realize where you've been going wrong the whole time. (And then you secretly wonder why you didn't figure that out sooner!) ...I wasn't opening my palm to let the water roll down my fingers. I was kind of just turning it to let the water roll out as though you were spilling water from a cup. Note to self: Rolling down fingers = good. Spilling like a cup = bad.

Next up, "Brushless Watercolor Techique"

Colors: Background - Pumice Stone; Dress Form - Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade,  Wild Honey, Barn Door, Fired Brick, Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Broken China, Dusty Concord; Edged in Frayed Burlap.

I had also learned this technique in an earlier class. Feeling a little more comfortable with it, I thought I'd play around and experiment a bit to see what I could accomplish.

First I tried making soft backgrounds (left and right samples shown above). I applied ink to an Altered Background stamp and spritzed it with water, then stamped the image onto the watercolor paper. Here's were I diverged from the original technique: instead of drying the stamped image as is, I blotted away the excess water with a towel. This gives a nice, even-toned watercolor look. No areas where the distress ink concentrated a little more or less, just all nicely balanced.

Then I tried a couple of different approaches with the dress form image. In the first attempt (left) I added just various colors of distress ink to the stamp, spritzed it with water and stamped it.

While I like the brightness of the colors, I wanted the image to "pop" a little more. So then I re-applied the same colors, but this time I also inked the edges of the stamp with a little Frayed Burlap. Spritzed the stamp with water and stamped it again. This created a really cool shadow along the left edge of the bodice and gave it the depth I was looking for.

Lastly, I stamped a second generation image using the "with frayed burlap" version onto a plain white background since this was the actual technique called for in the class.

Last but not least, "Wrinkle-free distress technique"

Colors:

This is not my first dance with this technique either. I "learned" it at a Lynn Warner make-n-take and have also seen it on one of Tim's videos along the way, but for some reason it kept coming out like I had two left feet. Love the look, but just wasn't pulling it together. Aha! Lightbulb moment! I was doing two things wrong:

1.) I was getting the ink on the craft sheet too wet so I was just picking up giant puddles. 

2.) I wasn't drying the inks in between picking up the layers of ink. *duh*

So there you have it. First day of techniques completed... and 8 more to go! I can't wait!